Welcome to this here place of introspection and extroversion (not to mention perversion) in Sunny Tokyo
;-)

Friday, October 06, 2006

It´s raining, it´s pouring, the old man is snooring..

I´ve had such a great day :-D after managing to sleep through the night (we´ll ignore those two hours between 1 and 3 ;-) I decided to be brave and attempt traversing the train system by my self, a somewhat daunting task when one can´t read the Kanji, but I knew Shibuyja was only two stops away so I just followed the flow.

It may seem funny that I´m this nervous after having lived in Japan for a year (15 years ago) but the thing is I feel slightly at odds ends here, there are so many people all hurrying, banging their umbrellas into mine, doesn´t help that it has also rained non stop since I arrived, the torrential heavy type and with it being so overcast it feels (to me) a bit like I´m right smack middle of Blade Runner only I know but a smattering of the language.. In short slightly claustrophobic, increased by a sense of being out of my depth and my brain frantically trying to interpret all the symbols around me ;-)

But anyways, managed to walk around Shibuya getting a feel for the place, found an amazing bookstore and seeing as I felt I thoroughly deserved it and that it was quite logical I rewarded myself with 4 Japanese books, 2 on Kanji, on on verbs and one (which I´m reading tonight ;-) on the misfortunuous ways to bemuddle your Japanese for the worst possible misunderstandings ;-D Then a bilingual map of Tokyo, Eragon (hey have to read the book before the movie comes out, and they trailer looks soooo good) and ooops *blush* the first season of Roswell.... Well it was 50% off, and I´ve never seen it, and I promise to watch it in Japanese and.. oh to hell with it because I felt like it ;-P

One thing that has struck me since being here is how amazingly positive everyone is to being approached, as soon as they realize I´m asking in Japanese they´re all smiles and no problem answering any question... it´s nice....and makes finding ones way around a LOT easyer!

Anyways, managed to order myself a hanko, i.e. my name stamp without which I can´t do any legal business here, might even managed to find my way back there to pick it up, fingers crossed.

Already I can feel my mind shifting gears, and it happens with increased frequency that I find myself unconsciously reading a Kanji signpost or a shampoo bottle, so I guess there is hope yet.. To explain the shifting gears thing, when I am faced with writing an essay I often get this feeling, I don´t feel like I´m actually doing any work but just looking at references and trying not to think about how close the deadline is, then all-over-a-sudden it just hits home and I find that I´ve made the connections and the material just streams out .. So let´s just hope the same goes for Japanese comprehension ;-)